Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Shopping Arcades In Kyoto


We find Japan to be a nice place to shop, not that we shop that much when we go there. We love the products and excellent services they offer and their sales people are just some of the nicest ones in the world! They smile, they bow to you, they thank you and they also carry the bags up to the door and open the for you. And more bowing. I really want to pack them and bring these people here. We could use more nicer people in this country. So lovely! 


Japan has many large department stores around, smaller shops that offer various goods and Shopping Arcades that also seem to be wonderful places to go to. In Kyoto, we found these two Shopping Arcades when we walked from Daimaru to Takashimaya to find a place for lunch.

These are the Teramachi and Shin Kyogoku Shopping Arcades. They are covered pedestrian streets located next to each other with shops selling just about everything and restaurants of all kind. We found some temples there too.





Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Dinner At Trattoria Sette, Kyoto


The hotel where we stayed in Kyoto is not exactly within walking distance to the city. Of course transports are available easily too. You can take bus, train or taxi, but for dinner, we opted to stay in the hotel and have dinner there. We saw what we wanted anyway, Italian cuisine in the house! The hotel has a nice Italian Trattoria in their second storey called Sette. 

I felt like I had been deprived from eating leaves for a long time, when in fact it was just days. We ordered a plate of salad to share. Originally, that's about all that I wanted to eat, because I thought I had eaten way too much in the past days. I, however, could not resist to try their Roast Chicken. It was delicious especially its crispy skins. The portion? Aw, yum, it's big! There were two boneless breast and two legs. I had to share them for sure!


As we all can always guess, DH went for Fettuccine with Seafood. He cleaned up the plate, it was spotless. The food must have been superb! All were good and the service was outstanding. What else could we ask?

 

Monday, October 29, 2012

Pictures From Jiuzhaigou, China


DH with Miss P, who is on the break, were in Jiuzhaigou, in the north of Sichuan Province which is up in the northern part of China. The place is so beautiful, I wish I could be there. Here are some pictures that DH sent me yesterday and today. They are lovely but I am certain the real things are so much more gorgeous than these pictures show.






Thanks DH for the pictures!

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Pictures From A Bakery


There are a very good number of great bakeries that we see in Japan. Japanese must love good bread. It is so easy to find bakeries there. We normally are able to find them easily in the basement of department stores like Daimaru, Isetan or Takashimaya. These pictures, I believe, are from Paul Bocuse Bakery in Kyoto. We bought some of these, they are so yummy!





Friday, October 26, 2012

Simply Curry


We took the train to go to Kyoto from Osaka. We planned to stay one night and both DH and I had one small bag each. We needed to take taxi to our hotel, Hyatt  Regency and we tried to get to the correct exit after we arrived at this big station in Kyoto. Kyoto station has a huge shopping, dining and entertainment complex attached to it.  We passed by a tiny restaurant that sells Curry Rice and decided to make a stop for a quick lunch there. We bought the tickets at the machine after we enter the place. DH had Fried Chicken and I picked Chicken Katsu, both were priced at 780 Yen. Not bad!


Thursday, October 25, 2012

Tea Time At Paul, Osaka


Not long after having lunch in Shinsaibashi, we stopped by at Paul Cafe in the basement of Daimaru to have a little tea time. I would not normally eat such thing all by myself, but I was still hungry after walking and climbing the steps to go to Osaka Castle the whole morning. I was craving for something sweet and this was just the right one! Yum!I would burn the calories consumed as I was going to do more walking about!



Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Osaka Castle


We made it to Osaka Castle this time. We took JR train from Osaka station and alighted after a couple of stops only. We had to walk a bit, the leafllet says that it takes about 20 minutes of walk. We took our time and probably took more than 30 minutes to get there. It was a fine day, sunny but cool. 


The castle itself is not large, it has a observation deck at the top where people can see the city. We are not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but I noticed many people do it anyway. What a shame!









After we were done, we walked again to the Subway Station nearby to take train to Shinsaibashi, a shopping area. It's lunch time! More walking.....


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Little Flower Cakes


One of my favorite shopping trips is to Umeda Loft in Osaka, it has eight floors filled with wonderful things. I particularly love the household floor the most. We spent so much time in there, looking and getting stuff. Mostly I did! DH was on his phone, surfing the net and patiently waiting. I ended up with a couple of silicon pans and today I used them for the first time. So pretty!



Monday, October 22, 2012

First Lunch In Osaka


It was actually not even 12 O'Clock yet in Singapore, but we were so hungry. It was just nearly 1PM in Osaka, where we were, and we were having our lunch. There's a floor in the building where Daimaru is, in Osaka Station, where some restaurants are located. Of course there are more in in the basement and other floors too. We went to a place that served Unagi with Rice, thanks to the pictures and/or display that it has in front of the restaurants, it was easier to communicate to the waiter what we wanted.  


Both of us ordered set lunch, DH's is at the very top above and mine is the one right above. Both of them have rice and Unagi. They were delicious!



To Ritz...


We took airport limousine to our hotel in the city, our stop was the second one. It was very straightforward. There was a courtesy phone to contact Ritz Carlton at the bus stop and somebody would come and pick us up and our bags. Simple. (Now that we knew!) I took some pictures along the way to the city.  We drove by the bay, saw many factories in particular. It took about  60 minutes altogether to the bus stop and some minutes of waiting and a little drive to the hotel.



The hotel service was really excellent, we got our room before 1130AM, although the official check in time was 3PM, despite a very hectic situation at the reception as many were checking out. It was great to be able to settle in right after we get in the city. We could now go out for lunch!


Sunday, October 21, 2012

In Flight Breakfast


I woke up after about three hours of sleep while flying. It was morning, past 6AM Osaka time or 5AM Singapore time. I was aware that breakfast was coming. I have selected Omelet and Sausage for my breakfast while DH chose Japanese meal. I figured I would have a whole week of eating Japanese cuisine once we landed and that would be a tiny bit much for me. 

I was served with a bowl of various nice cut up fruits, they were very refreshing and I just loved starting the day with fine fruits served in front of me. (At home I have to do them all by myself and clean up after!)


My appetite was not quite there but I tried to eat a little bit. Our flight was scheduled to arrive at almost 9AM and by the time we settled in the hotel, I estimated that it would be nearly 12. I needed to fill my stomach.

DH's Japanese breakfast was really colorful and had so many varieties, presented in a very artistic way, the way the Japanese people do!


Saturday, October 20, 2012

Before Flying...

Our flight last week, was so early in the morning. It was around 1:30AM, hence we had to keep our eyes open til we get to sit down in the plane that was about to take us to our destination. Miss K, who was flying to Perth has about the same departure time, checked in with her group while DH and I checked in to a different assigned lane. All were done before midnight and we got plenty of time to kill. We made our stop at DBS lounge and had our fruit juice.


At home, I normally made a combination of Apple, Carrot and Orange for my juice and that's what I requested. The fruits were not as sweet as I normally had at home but I drank it anyway. It's healthy to drink juice.  I certainly would like to be fit for the trip!

 

A few steps away from DBS lounge  is where Kris Flyer lounge located. We made a stop there too. I saw a couple of people eating Soto Ayam (Chicken Noodle Soup) and I could not resist and made myself a small bowl of it. I ate some just for tasting it. It's ordinary, nothing great but not bad either. 


It's around 12:45, now, we were ready to go to the gate and begin our trip.